Concerns about the hex system

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by Miir

There are way to many factors to account for with this new territory system. I decided to try and model it a bit but it's not as easy as I thought.

I gave each empire equal resource nodes and bases and spread the troops out equally on the map to get a feel for how things would look. This is a little under the 666v666v666 just to keep the numbers even. It's basically 640v640v640.



This is starting to look like a cool board game.

fuck that, make it into a webgame, pit 3 players against eachother each week in a turn based webgame. give them resources to make troops tanks veh etc based on what they hold, each week you get rated and moveup or down depending on the the amount of resources you generated overall.

[DOUBLEXBAUGH]

Risk - Auraxis addition!

The 1 troop will be modled after the factions heavy assault, the 5 troop piece will be their MAX, and the 10 troop piece will be their MBT

[Eyeklops]

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

fuck that, make it into a webgame, pit 3 players against eachother each week in a turn based webgame. give them resources to make troops tanks veh etc based on what they hold, each week you get rated and moveup or down depending on the the amount of resources you generated overall.

lol Planetside 2, The RTS

[ringring]

Originally Posted by Crator

I have same concerns and hopefully something will help to mitigate this. One thing Mirr's capture system video failed to point out is if an empire decided to attack behind the lines, away from owned hexes, and was successful, then they would be able to capture the adjacent hexes fast. That's the benefit of pulling something like that off. I'm hoping, if you use the right tactics, have the appropriate amount of people, and the right equipment/certs used, it can be done.

Ya, but if your empire allowed another to capture hexes behind the lines it deserves what it gets. Hopefully this will provide the strategic gameplay - deny tanks to your enemy, go capture the 'tank resource'.

[Hamma]

Originally Posted by Miir

There are way to many factors to account for with this new territory system. I decided to try and model it a bit but it's not as easy as I thought.

I gave each empire equal resource nodes and bases and spread the troops out equally on the map to get a feel for how things would look. This is a little under the 666v666v666 just to keep the numbers even. It's basically 640v640v640.



This is starting to look like a cool board game.

Very cool this really helps visualize what things might look like.

[moosepoop]

clusterfucks are OSSUM. its the msot amazing experience ive ever had in a fps. hundreds of people shooting at each other, bullets flying non stop

[kaffis]

Miir, that's a quite nice map you've got there -- any chance you could post a blank (layered, I assume?) version, with no colors added in, so we could edit in our own territory ownership as we discuss possibilities without duplicating your very nice layout and shading?

[Miir]

Sure I can upload something when I get home later.

[LoopbackZero]

Wow. Thanks for the thoughts everyone.

My main concern after considering all of this is the lack of strategy due to constant front line grinding. Perhaps if you back-capped a base, you get the adjacent hexes, and bases would be exempt from adjacency penalties/bonuses during the cap.

[Grognard]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

I don't know what the mainstream, frontline game is going to do as far as how deep and often it will go across a map, but I am very interested in behind the lines missions. That's the number one thing I want to know about. IE - going behind the lines to blow something up, and it actually have an affect on the overall efforts.

Along the same lines as this (no pun...), I am very curious about the implementation of the adjacency... Since, if you look at the map, and in Miir's video example, the behind the lines scenario always shows full hexagonal adjacency... Hexagonal... not faction control... What about beaches/edges where you have only a few adjacent territories?

Once you back-hack a "coastal" (amphibious landing?), is it much harder to recover this kind of a territory because the faction has much fewer adjacent territories? 2 territory adjacency at a coastline seems like it will be a lot different than 6-7 surrounding... In other words, a lot more doable... am I wrong?

Edit: Oh, I see Ruwyn touched on this a bit... good deal, its a good point to reiterate anyway.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by WildVS

Much of the game play will be defined by the capture timer on non-adjacent hexes.

Exactly this. The team has set themselves up with a great knob to fiddle with to tune the gameplay to their liking. That fiddling will start in beta, but will remain open to tweaking in the live game if population fluctuations, balance changes in other parts of the game, new features/equipment, etc. disrupt it or allow it to drift off of their target.

I imagine the goal is to strike a balance in which the front lines (which are long in and of themselves, and thus there's plenty of strategic opportunities in simply selecting or changing where along that front you're applying pressure) are where the bulk of the action is (this is fun because it allows people to set up and man defenses, not simply chase ghost hacking teams around the map), but allow for hacking deep enemy territory as a diversion (but not so short as to prevent rapid response teams from having a chance to arrive and contest you) or aggressive, high-risk strike at particular resources.

Another thing that I think shouldn't be discounted is the notion of attempting hacks one territory deep as a way to sandwich a dug in territory that is too "well connected" to hold long enough to flip. Establishing that territory behind it not only allows your forces to flank in their assault, but it also swings the initial ticket count more in your favor, making flipping the territory with fewer control points hard-won possible.

The caveat there is that when you're flipping something near a major fight like that, the force you bring to do that back-hacking needs to be beefy enough to weather the much closer-at-hand defenses who were already in the vicinity.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by kaffis

Another thing that I think shouldn't be discounted is the notion of attempting hacks one territory deep as a way to sandwich a dug in territory that is too "well connected" to hold long enough to flip. Establishing that territory behind it not only allows your forces to flank in their assault, but it also swings the initial ticket count more in your favor, making flipping the territory with fewer control points hard-won possible.

The caveat there is that when you're flipping something near a major fight like that, the force you bring to do that back-hacking needs to be beefy enough to weather the much closer-at-hand defenses who were already in the vicinity.

It's stuff like this that has me most excited about the hex system over the lattice system. Simply put it's just a more dynamic system with a lot more potential for variety in strategy and tactics. Obviously it's dependent on good balance, but it should be pretty easy to sort that out in beta.

[Mjolnir]

I think the main concern here is that this system will turn PS2 into WWI trench warfare, with empires locked in combat over the same area for extended periods of time with no real point to it.

I personally think another possible issue (which is quite the opposite) is that it could just turn into a giant game of "whack a mole," with empires capturing bases and then promptly leaving to go capture an enemy base, leaving the newly captured base open to recapture by the enemies.

Conquest in Battlefield games on larger maps would often play out this way, since there was not a sufficient player density to sustain constant combat at all of the capture points. Squads would just wander from flag to flag. They would encounter light (if any) resistance, capture the base, then leave to go capture another base while leaving their newly captured base completely undefended.

I guess this all depends on what the player density of PS2 continents really is, and how far apart the bases are.

The other often discussed issue is the fact that there is no inherent purpose to the game if an empire cannot "win," but that is a different issue entirely.

Similarly I think the fact that the uncapturable base zones for each empire are static in nature might make the game pretty repetitive, since the empires will always be located in the exact same corner of the map.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

It's stuff like this that has me most excited about the hex system over the lattice system.

I agree entirely. I'm pretty pumped over the hex system's potential in conjunction with resources. The notion of capturing land instead of simply facilities is exciting in itself, but I'm really hoping that establishing clear "front lines" like this will lend itself to exciting pitched battles rather than base-hopping action.

Originally Posted by Mjolnir

I think the main concern here is that this system will turn PS2 into WWI trench warfare, with empires locked in combat over the same area for extended periods of time with no real point to it.

I personally think another possible issue (which is quite the opposite) is that it could just turn into a giant game of "whack a mole," with empires capturing bases and then promptly leaving to go capture an enemy base, leaving the newly captured base open to recapture by the enemies.

Conquest in Battlefield games on larger maps would often play out this way, since there was not a sufficient player density to sustain constant combat at all of the capture points. Squads would just wander from flag to flag. They would encounter light (if any) resistance, capture the base, then leave to go capture another base while leaving their newly captured base completely undefended.

I guess this all depends on what the player density of PS2 continents really is, and how far apart the bases are.

The other often discussed issue is the fact that there is no inherent purpose to the game if an empire cannot "win," but that is a different issue entirely.

Similarly I think the fact that the uncapturable base zones for each empire are static in nature might make the game pretty repetitive, since the empires will always be located in the exact same corner of the map.

While these are two valid concerns, you have to consider that they're at two ends of the spectrum, and there *is* a spectrum between them.

I'm actually really excited over the notion of WWI style warfare, with dug-in positions and the like; The notion that the lines of battle may move slowly in some circumstances lends gravity and weight to the success when you do finally advance the lines. Remember, Planetside is an "always on" battle -- the notion that it may take a day or more to make significant progress, and that you can *have* goals for the day, or the week, rather than simply the next hour, is pretty epic in and of itself. Certainly, there's a balance to strike in the interest of fun, but so long as the developers set up smaller goals that can swing back and forth as the armies fight for that larger goal, I don't think the fun is necessarily at risk.

My biggest frustration with Planetside 1 was that people didn't like to defend. Even the most common defensive strategies consisted of waiting for an empire to strike and then sending out "rapid response teams" or the like to *counter-assault* instead of actually having boots on the ground when the enemy's initial assault took place.

And it's understandable, nobody wants to sit around someplace and wait for enemies to show up and attack you. So, PS1 saw a lot of hopping around from base to base, assaulting and counter-assaulting or responding to the enemies' assaults to disrupt their offensive... and not much real defense. (Ironically enough, the closest you saw to real defense was "defending the hack"; that is, the real defense was when your empire was on the offensive and seizing territory)

The hex system, and that trench warfare you worry so much about, is a great step towards making that defense both more valuable and easier to set up/convince people to engage in. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of where the enemy will engage, because it behooves the enemy to spread out along the lines instead of simply choose one of the two or three available facilities to assault next based on lattice connections.

So if you've got two empires spread along a line of battle, each side is motivated to stay there because if they leave, they'll lose ground. Sure, you'll still have heavier pushes probing the lines, looking for weak spots, but my hope is that even the weak spots will have people actively defending against the small ambient troops on the other side before the roving squad(s) making the push arrived. This gives the defending empire time for backup to be called in before the defense is overwhelmed.

It has the potential to be a really good system, and if the resources are sufficient motivation to make empires care about every inch of the battlefield, I think it can work with the right tuning in place.

[atomos]

I think the idea was to change the resource map weekly or monthly to change the priority that each empire places on each hex. There will be times when the changes in resource map work against your empire so you may lose ground and other times when it will be the opposite.